CHAPTER IV
BELOW THE BRUTES
September 13
I wonDER: how I have lived through this. Peter camé
in last night just after I had closed my diary. I had
never seen him like it before; his eyes were half out
of his head, bloodshot and furious. He must have
been drinking like a madman. He was trembling with
rage. He came straight up to me, and hit me de-
liberately in the face.
“ That'll teach you,’ he shouted, and called me a
foul name. :
I couldn’t answer. I was too hurt, not by the blow,
but by the surprise. I had pictured it so differently.
He staggered back into the middle of the room and
pointed to the blood that was running down my face.
The edge of his ring had cut the corner of my eye.
The sight sent him into fits of hysterical laughter.
The only feeling in my mind was that he was ill;
that it was my duty to nurse him. I tried to go to the
door to get help. He thought I was escaping, and
flung me back right across the room on to the bed,
howling with rage.
“You can get away with it at once,” he said, “ but
that’s enough. You wait right here, and see whether
Mr. Bloody King Lamus will come to fetch you. Don’t
fret ; I expect he will. He likes dirt, the filthy beast ! ”
I burst out crying. The contrast between the two
men was too shocking. And I belonged to this screaming
swearing bully with his insane jealousy and his senseless
brutality !
I would rather have swept out Basil’s studio for the
rest of my life than be Lady Pendragon.
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